donna tartt deeply understands the car-less experience and lifestyle. underrated motif of her oeuvre

richard papen doesn't have a car and doesn't want to ask anyone for a favor so he stays in an unheated warehouse in the winter in rural vermont and almost dies of hypothermia. theo decker doesn't have a car because he is a 14 year old native new yorker so he walks for miles to catch the only bus to go to the nearest shopping plaza so he can shoplift groceries. harriet cleve dufresnes can't drive because she's 12

not getting much of an answer from googling "can donna tartt drive" or "does donna tartt have a drivers license" but she did say this in an interview

which could mean nothing

mock sexy old romance novel cover <3

Keep reading

the big three questions of media analysis: what the author wanted to say, what they actually said, and what they didn’t know they were saying

for the last one i don’t just mean oh the author inadvertently wrote in gay subtext or whatever i’m talking about media as a cultural artifact which can reveal a ton about societal norms, biases, ideals, etc. it’s all about positionality and an unexamined positionality is often the most revealing of all

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I humbly suggest that true crime freaks should get into learning about scammers instead of serial killers. I LOVE reading about fraud and grifts and pyramid schemes. true crime ppl have all this paranoid energy about murder, which is rare in the grand scheme of things.....maybe instead that could be channeled into some productive rage toward capitalism.

And u know a side effect of learning about scam artists is that you start to understand certain things about economics, and just how STUPID these systems are and how easily they are taken advantage of....and I'd much rather people gained a passing familiarity with economics than whatever armchair psychologist shit these true crimers get on. We need fewer people who think they're experts on "sociopaths" and more people who understand how people like Elizabeth Holmes and the WeWork guy were able to do what they did

Here are some of my favorite books about financial scams:

The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana B. Henriques.

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis (about the 2008 stock market collapse).

The Caesar's Palace Coup: How a Billionaire Brawl Over the Famous Casino Exposed the Corruption of the Private Equity Industry by Max Frumes and Sujeet Indap. (I admit I've never finished this one; the writing is hard to read.)

The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, by Zac Bissonette. I bought this book because of the subtitle and I have never regretted it. You must read it.

Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale. They turned this one into a movie! The book was very different and is worth reading.

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion, by Elliot Brown and Maureen Farrell. I haven't read this one yet, but it's on my tbr pile!

Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church, by Gareth Gore. I'm reading this one right now. The author is a financial journalist who stumbled onto this story by unraveling a bank failure in Spain.

And here's a list of more non-fiction books about fraud and financial scams. The first book on this list is about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, which I also haven't read yet.

Enjoy!

ultimately the truth about frankenstein is that we are all grotesque amalgamations of the best and worst parts of everyone who came before us. and sometimes the people who are supposed to love us because of and in spite of this will not. and we can kill them with hammers for that. and i think that’s beautiful

my brother in christ frankenstein is the title of the book

I'm volunteering for a literary journal right now and there's two things I think you all should know.

1. Most people that submit to literary journals are cis white men. We know this because our journal has an anonymous survey about demographics for people that submit.

2. Most things that get submitted to the creative non fiction section are on the level of middle school "What I did over the summer" essays.

I cannot see the demographics of the people whose essays I'm reading, but guys, if you are wondering if you should submit your work to a literary journal or not, I promise you that just in terms of statistics there are a lot of mediocre cis white men and people in general confidently submitting weird crap that isn't literature to literature magazines. Do it. Submit your work. Please. If you want there to be more diversity in literature, be the diversity. Do it. Do it do it do it.

In general literary magazines want to include more diversity, but if poc, queer people, disabled people, etc. don't submit their work then they aren't gonna get more diverse because we just won't have the material necessary to get more diverse. Submit your work. Do it. Do it. Do it do it do it.

Here's a list of university run literary journals. Do it. Get published.

Many indie lit mags also welcome works from BIPOC and LGBTQIA creatives because the editorial staff themselves are in that demographic. Quarantine brought on the start of the SO many indie lit mags - it’s almost a golden age. Don’t be afraid to submit — there will always be so many niches and aesthetics that one will bound to be the one that fits your style. 

There is so much work from marginalized narratives in litmags these days — people lament there is no representation in media, but that disregards the progress and diversity of the works of editors and writers who help make these litmags possible. 

There is representation, and it is flourishing. They are waiting to be read. 

The Lumiere Review compiles a list of submission opportunities every month, and it are always very useful: 

https://lumierereview.com/sub-sep-oct-2021

List of Litmags that Specifically Look for Work from Marginalized Creators or is Run by Marginalized Creators:

Warning Lines: https://warninglines.com/

With Confetti: https://with-confetti.com/

Giving Room Magazine: http://www.givingroommag.com/

The Bitchin’ Kitsch: https://www.talbot-heindl.com/

Tealight Press: https://www.tealightpress.com/

Tipping the Scales: https://www.tippingthescalesjournal.co.uk/

The Winnow Magazine: https://www.thewinnowmagazine.com/

perhappened: https://www.perhappened.com/

AZE Journal: https://azejournal.com/

Honeyfire Lit: https://honeyfirelit.com/

and so much more!!

(And even if some litmags’ mission statement isn’t specifically for marginalized creators, they will always welcome these narratives.)

So please, please submit!

Independent magazines are great too! I’m more familiar with the university journal scene so I appreciate this addition.

hello, this is a list of asian literary journals!! it emphasizes south-east asian journals, but there’s a few from other regions as well

I worked on a literary journal for a semester (degree requirement but HIGHLY valuable experience as a writer) and the amount of mediocre white men who submitted was staggering. one guy submitted four poems about various famous hot women then a fifth about his hemorrhoids. I promise you (yes, you!) reading this that you can do better than that!

Interviewer: What difference in usage would you point out in these three languages [Russian, English, French], these three instruments?

Nabokov: Nuances. If you take framboise in French, for example, it's a scarlet color, a very red color. In English, the word raspberry is rather dull, with perhaps a little brown or violet. A rather cold color. In Russian it's a burst of light, malinovoe; the word has associations of brilliance, of gaiety, of ringing bells. How can you translate that?

- Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor. Bryan Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy, Eds.